Prostitutes performed on stage at an AIDS conference in Amsterdam Friday to raise awareness that sex workers should not be objectified or dehumanized.
“We want to humanize sex work and sex workers to people, because the minute you start objectifying people, the minute you start dehumanizing people, is when more violence can happen,” said Siobhan Knox, Sex Workers Opera co-founder, according to AFP News.
VIDEO: Sex workers take centre stage at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, using music and dance to press home a serious message: “We are people too, and we have rights” pic.twitter.com/fsfLZek7WH
— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 27, 2018
They unitedly declared: “There are no bad whores, just bad laws” and “whatever the job, it’s survival that we choose.”
“We’re all human beings at the end of the day and nobody should judge us for what we do for a living,” Charlie Rose a 37-year-old prostitute from London told AFP News after the show. “Human rights state that we are entitled to earn a living and provide for our families, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
They propose that after 10 years of decriminalization, the average number of sex workers diagnosed with HIV would cut in half. They also believe decriminalization would allow prostitutes to feel safe when reporting violence or abuse from clients to the local governing authorities. (RELATED: MSNBC’s Ruhle Breaks Down Basics Of Prostitution)
The sex workers said they often worry about access to health care, fear of getting expelled from learning institutions or that their children will be taken from them once their occupation is discovered, as well as difficulty going through the adoption process.
One protest in particular was directed at former President Bill Clinton during his speech at the conference in demand that he “decriminalize sex work,” reported Newsflare.
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